Educational Challenges Facing Female Students in Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the educational challenges which were facing female students in secondary schools in Morogoro Rural District. Specifically, the study aimed at: • Examining female enrolment status in secondary schools in Morogoro Rural District; • Assessing problems facing female students in secondary schools in Morogoro Rural • Evaluating how educational programmes addressed the shortfalls. The study area was one of the six districts of Morogoro Region which is bordered to the east by the Coast Region, to the south by the Morogoro Urban District and to the west by the Mvomero District. Morogoro Rural District had six administrative divisions which were divided into 25 wards and 132 villages. The selection of this district as a study area was mainly because it was general poor, rural and among the 50% most deprived area in Tanzania. A cross-sectional research design was used in this study. This design was used because it allowed the collection of data from different groups of respondents at one time. The collected data were used for simple statistical description, interpretation and determination of the relationship among different variables. A simple random sampling procedure was applied to obtain schools and respondents in this study. Out of the 13 secondary schools in the studied district, the sample consisted of four schools namely: Matombo, Nelson Mandela, Mkuyuni and Kiroka. From this sample, three groups of respondents were drawn-male students, female students, and their teachers. The first two (female and male students) were for comparison purposes, and the third (teachers) were for providing clarification on certain issues. A total of 80 students, 32 teachers and four school administrators (key informants) were interviewed. Names of the selected students and teachers were obtained from school registers. From each school, 20 students (10 girls and 10 boys) and eight teachers (four males and four females) were interviewed.